OBS Studio 33.0: What’s New, Plugin Changes, and How to Update

OBS Studio 33.0, the latest version of the free, open-source streaming and recording software, is out. Most of the big changes are under the hood: plugins now load from new locations on Windows, and browser sources run on Chromium 150 instead of 127. In the preview, sources now show guide lines when they snap into place and can line up with sources they don’t touch. Number fields, such as position, size, and bitrate, no longer block typing partway through and only apply a new value when you press Enter. Some changes could affect an existing setup, especially if you use third-party plugins or run OBS on Ubuntu, so this article finishes with a short checklist to run through before you update.

Plugins are add-ons that give OBS new sources, filters, and tools. In 33.0, OBS changes where it looks for them and how it loads them:

• Plugins that come with OBS now live in a separate folder named “core”.
• On Windows, third-party plugins get a new install location and folder structure. Plugin locations on macOS haven’t changed.
• OBS still loads plugins from the old Windows locations but flags them as Legacy. Those locations are supported until OBS Studio 34.0.

Your existing plugins should keep working after you update. To find out which ones need attention, open the Plugin Manager that arrived in OBS Studio 32.0 and look for plugins marked Legacy. Install an updated version of each one from its developer before OBS 34.0. If you install plugins by hand, OBS’s Legacy Plugin Locations guide explains the new folder layout.

Safe Mode launches OBS without third-party add-ons, so you can still open the app when a plugin is causing crashes. OBS offers to start in Safe Mode after it shuts down unexpectedly.

In 33.0, Safe Mode blocks every third-party plugin but still loads the plugins that come with OBS. It also no longer starts the WebSocket server, so remote-control apps that connect to OBS over WebSocket can’t connect until you restart OBS normally.

A browser source displays a web page inside your scene. Alerts, chat boxes, donation goals, and many overlays from streaming services are browser sources. Docks, the extra panels you can add to the OBS window (a chat panel, for example), run on the same engine.

That engine is CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework). OBS 33.0 updates it from version 127 to version 150, which brings it from a July 2024 Chromium release up to one from September 2026. Overlay and alert widgets can now use web features added to Chrome in that time, such as text that resizes automatically to fit the width of its box so a long username stays inside an alert.

After you update, open your scenes and check that your alerts and overlays look the way they did before.

When you drag a source around the preview, OBS can snap it to the edges of the canvas and to other sources. In 33.0, snapping works like this:

• Visual guides show what a source is snapping to as you drag it.
• Snapping along a full axis lines a source up with another source’s edge anywhere along that line, even when the two sources don’t touch.
• Hidden sources are ignored, so sources you’ve turned off can’t pull the source you’re moving out of position.

You’ll find the snapping options under Settings > General.

Many OBS settings use number fields with small up and down arrows, such as a source’s position and size or an encoder’s bitrate. In 33.0, these fields:

• Accept typing without blocking input partway through
• Show long numbers completely
• Apply a new value when you press Enter, not while you’re still typing
• Move several steps at once when you hold Shift and press the up or down arrow
• Let you drag across the number to select part of it

Audio monitoring lets you hear a source through your own headphones or speakers. You might use it to check that a music or video source is playing, or to listen to a source you’re keeping off the stream. OBS 33.0 adds hotkeys for controlling monitoring on individual sources, and you set them up under Settings > Hotkeys.

If you use Stream Deck, you can assign one of these hotkeys to a key with the Hotkey action and control monitoring with a tap.

• Game Capture: Better at detecting games running in fullscreen. Game Capture is the Windows source for capturing PC games. Console gameplay through a capture card uses a Video Capture Device source instead, which this change doesn’t affect.
• Window Capture (Windows): The capture methods have been renamed.
• NVIDIA effects: OBS supports the newest NVIDIA Broadcast SDKs, the software behind OBS’s NVIDIA audio and video effect filters, such as noise removal and background removal on supported NVIDIA GPUs.
• NVENC on Arm64: NVENC is the dedicated video encoder built into NVIDIA GPUs. Encoding on it frees up your CPU, and it now works on Arm64 systems.
• Simple output recording: In Simple output mode, the recording audio bitrate now scales with the number of audio channels, so multichannel audio gets a bitrate to match.

• Plugin locations. On Windows, plugins in the old install locations load but are flagged as Legacy, and support for those locations ends with OBS Studio 34.0 (see Rebuilt plugin loading above).
• Missing encoder check. When OBS loads a profile, it now checks that the encoders the profile uses are available on your computer. This helps when you move a profile between machines, such as from a PC with an NVIDIA GPU to one without.
• Ubuntu. OBS Studio 33.0 no longer supports Ubuntu 24.04. The official package is built for Ubuntu 26.04 (x86_64).
• Building from source. FFmpeg 6.x and 7.x, and Qt 6.4 through 6.9, are no longer supported. This affects you if you compile OBS yourself or use a package your Linux distribution builds.

• Fixed groups glitching in Studio Mode and showing up live when they shouldn’t
• Fixed an AMD AMF encoder issue that could cause streams to disconnect
• Improved file splitting for Hybrid MP4 and Hybrid MOV recordings, the crash-resistant formats introduced in OBS Studio 30.2
• Fixed outputs getting stuck running when an invalid rescale output resolution is set
• Fixed PipeWire screen capture sources appearing twice in Studio Mode on Linux
• Fixed a potential crash on Linux when a USB microphone is unplugged
• Fixed the monitoring icon showing the wrong state when monitoring is changed by third-party tools or over WebSocket
• Fixed potential crashes when renaming a source with the Add Source window open, when switching away from a newly created profile, when the shader cache file is invalid, and when a source’s type is missing
• Fixed a crash at startup on macOS 27.2
• Fixed profile import failing when the folder path ends with a slash
• Fixed a potential freeze during video and audio processing

1. Back up your scene collection. Select Scene Collection > Export and save the file somewhere safe.
2. Back up your profile. Select Profile > Export to save your output, encoder, and stream settings.
3. Check your third-party plugins. Make a list of the plugins you rely on, and look on each developer’s page for a version or notes covering OBS 33.0. After you update, check the Plugin Manager for plugins marked Legacy.
4. Check your platform. On Ubuntu, the official OBS 33.0 package requires Ubuntu 26.04, so upgrade from 24.04 before you install it.
5. Update OBS. On Windows, select Help > Check For Updates. On macOS, select OBS Studio > Check For Updates. You can also download the installer from obsproject.com.
6. Test your scenes. Open each scene and confirm that browser sources, plugin sources, and audio sources work before you go live or start recording.

With a backup saved and your plugins checked, you’re ready to install 33.0. If you switch scenes, mute sources, or start recordings from Stream Deck, our guide to controlling OBS Studio from Stream Deck shows how to set it up.